tea, butter, etc., and especially with small pyramids of dough, or of rice or clay, and accompanied by much burning of incense-sticks.  The service performed by the priests is more solemn, the music louder and more exciting, than usual.  The laity make their offerings, tell their beads, and repeat Om mani padma hom,” etc.  In the concordat that took place between the Dalai-Lama and the Altun Khaghan, on the reconversion of the Mongols to Buddhism in the 16th century, one of the articles was the entire prohibition of hunting and the slaughter of animals on the monthly fast days.  The practice varies much, however, even in Tibet, with different provinces and sects—­a variation which the Ramusian text of Polo implies in these words:  “For five days, or four days, or three in each month, they shed no blood,” etc.

In Burma the Worship Day, as it is usually called by Europeans, is a very gay scene, the women flocking to the pagodas in their brightest attire. (H.  T. Memoires, I. 6, 208; Koeppen, I. 563-564, II. 139, 307-308; Pallas, Samml. II. 168-169).

NOTE 4.—­These matrimonial customs are the same that are afterwards ascribed to the Tartars, so we defer remark.

NOTE 5.—­So Pauthier’s text, “en legation.”  The G. Text includes Nicolo Polo, and says, “on business of theirs that is not worth mentioning,” and with this Ramusio agrees.

CHAPTER XLV.

OF THE CITY OF ETZINA.

When you leave the city of Campichu you ride for twelve days, and then reach a city called ETZINA, which is towards the north on the verge of the Sandy Desert; it belongs to the Province of Tangut.[NOTE 1] The people are Idolaters, and possess plenty of camels and cattle, and the country produces a number of good falcons, both Sakers and Lanners.  The inhabitants live by their cultivation and their cattle, for they have no trade.  At this city you must needs lay in victuals for forty days, because when you quit Etzina, you enter on a desert which extends forty days’ journey to the north, and on which you meet with no habitation nor baiting-place.[NOTE 2] In the summer-time, indeed, you will fall in with people, but in the winter the cold is too great.  You also meet with wild beasts (for there are some small pine-woods here and there), and with numbers of wild asses.[NOTE 3] When you have travelled these forty days across the Desert you come to a certain province lying to the north.  Its name you shall hear presently.

[Illustration:  Wild Ass of Mongolia.]